Publication
Electoral Systems and Turnout: Evidence From a Regression Discontinuity Design
Electoral Systems and Turnout: Evidence From a Regression Discontinuity Design. In this article, published on the website SAGE research methods, authors Jaroslaw Kantorowicz and Tobias M. Hlobil discuss how a Regression Discontinuity Design can be executed.
- Author
- Jaroslaw Kantorowicz & Tobias M. Hlobil
- Date
- 01 January 2020
In the article, the authors discuss this method by way of an example about voter turnout in elections. The authors use the numbers from the 2002 elections in Poland. On the basis of a population threshold of 20,000 inhabitants, municipalities were allocated to two different groups: either to a majoritarian or a proportional electoral system. By using this population threshold, a discontinuity is introduced, because almost identical municipalities are split into two groups, one group with a majoritarian electoral system and another group with a proportional electoral system. The authors show in the article how this discontinuity can be used to reliably and accurately estimate the effect of a change from a majority to a proportional electoral system on voter turnout.